festation there is in this particular of the imperfection-the inevitable imperfection-of human jurisprudence! A poor starving wretch is detected in pilfering a little food, to sustain expiring nature, or an old garment to save him from perishing with the winter's cold, and he forfeits his freedom in a gaol. A hot-headed citizen strikes his neighbor or libels his good name, and justice lays her heavy hand upon him. A desperate debtor is driven by the agony of bankruptcy to the folly of forgery, and the law prescribes its penalties for his infirmity and crime. A bolder villain robs a mail, and atones for what may have been the rash impulse of a moment's temptation, with his life. Thus the law proclaims its sanctions and forfeitures to secure property and character and physical life. On the other side may be seen, consorting with innocence, that moral guilt which legislation cannot, and professes not to strike at. The publisher, for instance, scatters by hundreds, or it may be by thousands, volumes that can pour their slow poison into the moral life of man-that can defile the imagination, and betray the natural sense of right and wrong—that can undermine the slender and unsteady fabric of youthful integrity, and even steal its native innocence from the heart of unsuspicious maidenhood—and then, after thus spreading the elements of ruin, he goes "unwhipp'd of justice." The jurisdiction over such matters belongs to the private court of conscience, or to the open tribunal of public opinion, and to them they must be left. Shakspeare has depicted poor old Lear as meditating something like a reform of the law in these respects, but it was not till his wits were crazed, and his sovereignty shattered by daughters and storms.

The effects of such publications as we have been alluding to, are, it is true, often very remote, and there may be therefore great difficulty in tracing them to their causes, but that we have not spoken too strongly, we appeal to any reflecting mind to consider how mighty-whether for good or evil-a mere book may be in its influence on the formation of character- and how limitless that influence both as to time and numbers. We have said more on this subject than we anticipated in touching it, but we are earnest to guard against an abuse, which is calculated to make books suspected things, and to create a necessity of subjecting them to some sort of family censorship before they can be with safety entrusted to the hands of the young and innocent. We have taken this opportunity of expressing ourselves, because respectable publishers are sometimes found yielding to the temptation of issuing works of which the chief attraction is their ex

ceptionable character. It is a subject that cannot well be adverted to but in the abstract; for it is a familiar fact that there is no greater auxiliar to the circulation of a book than a vehement censure on the score of immorality. This consideration often gives to the publisher of a dangerous book a most ill deserved impunity. Our remarks may not reach those who exercise the immediate control over these matters, but, by awakening public opinion, they may aid in creating a power, if not of preventing, at least of condemning an abuse, which passes without rebuke only when unnoticed.

The abundant literary resources of Great Britain are constantly producing works, the re-publication of which, notwithstanding their intrinsic value, might not for various reasons prove a safe business enterprize. We are desirous of introducing to a certain extent such publications to our readers, in order to induce those, in whose power it may be to extend their acquaintance to the works themselves, and to furnish to others a portion of the satisfaction to be derived from the author's own pages.

We have rarely met with any volumes, of which we would more gladly promote the circulation than those now before usthe Remains of Bishop Sandford-published a few years since. They contain a memoir by the Rev. John Sandford-extracts from the Bishop's Diary and Correspondence, and a selection from his Sermons. The work belongs to that class of booksnot very numerous—which leave their impression upon the feelings as well as the understanding. Communion with the printed page partakes of the spirit of living intercourse. A faithful record of a good man's life, it addresses itself to our being in its best moments. Describing the career of a saintly mortal on the common road of life, it calls up in the reader's heart sympathies and affections which are unconsciously shaped by imagination into the form of love for some living being. We gather from the book something more than the knowledge and memory of the life it narrates; and the manifold human heartedness which inspires its pages is proved by the circumstance that, while it may be especially dear to those who were familiar with the living man, it harmonizes so truly with the universal elements of humanity, as to remove from the stranger's heart the sense of strangeness. In dwelling on Bishop Sandford's character we seem to be carried back to the days of "holy Mr. Herbert," and to breathe the pure atmosphere that dwells about the memory of the lives commemorated by the simple pen of Isaac Wal

ton. The charm of the work is, that it is so ingenuous a representation of personal character, and admits us to the undisguised intimacy of private life. Nor let it be imagined that this is an ordinary attraction: he must have read with little thought and much blind confidence, who perceives nothing but truth of purpose in the multitude of memoirs and self-biographies, which profess to hold up the light of individual example. In nine cases out of ten the biographer shrinks from candid dealing with the world-he becomes the historian-the apologist-the advocate the panegyrist, any thing but the faithful narrator of the daily incidents—the transient indications of character—the minute expressions of thought and feeling, all which, when affectionately and judiciously recorded, best reveal the true form and fashion of individual nature. Very grateful are we therefore for a true memoir. An air of reality pervades the work before us. The reader is, not left to guesses at truth, which is plainly impressed on every page. It discloses the motions of a pious man's heart, and with a due reserve and delicacy the while, it lifts the veil from the household life of a Christian family.

The work appears in some respects to have been compiled in haste, but the absence of that elaborate preparation, which characterizes publications of the kind, is scarcely to be regretted in one which was manifestly designed to gratify chiefly the wishes and affections of immediate friends. We can readily conceive that the family of Bishop Sandford might be restrained by a sentiment of domestic modesty from anticipating that the record of such a life would, when unaided by personal recollections, challenge much of the attention of a busy world.

It is a fact of some interest that the Remains of Bishop Sandford was the last book read by the late Samuel Taylor Coleridge, with what feelings appears from one of the last records of his conversation, not many days before his death:

"I have been very deeply interested in the account of Bishop Sandford's life, published by his son. He seems to have been a thorough gentleman, upon the model of St. Paul, whose manners were the finest of any man's upon record."— Table Talk. II. p. 339.

This feeling is still more strongly described by Mr. Henry Nelson Coleridge, the nephew of the poet-philosopher, and editor of the Table Talk :'

"The Remains of Bishop Sandford' was the very last book Mr. Coleridge ever read. He was deeply interested in the picture

drawn of the Bishop, and said that the mental struggles and bodily sufferings indicated in the Diary had been his own for years past. He conjured me to peruse the Memoir and the Diary with great care: I have received,' said he, 'much spiritual comfort and strength from the latter. O! were my faith and devotion, like my sufferings, equal to that good man's! He felt, as I do, how deep a depth is prayer in faith.' - Table Talk II. p. 238, note.

There is food for reflection in the statement that such a intellect as Coleridge's should, after its vast circuits amidst the lore of ancient and modern ages, have found a resting place with these meek volumes. There is a lesson of intellectual humility in the thought, that here, in the last of its mortal hours, reposed a spirit, whose flights we need the gorgeous phrases of Milton's prose to describe-a spirit which at one time had been "soaring into the high region of his fancies with his garland and singing robes about him," and again ascending "the highest arcs, that human contemplation circling upwards can make from the globy sea whereon she stands."

The events of Bishop Sandford's life may be briefly told. He was born near Dublin in 1766. His character, the seriousness of which was early evident, was developed by sound and appropriate education. Intercourse with a family acquaintance chanced to bring his worth to the notice of the consort of George III. and thus opened a prospect of clerical promotion by the direct patronage of royalty, which a more ambitious divine would not have lost. The primitive disinterestedness of character, with which he allowed himself to be removed from this road to preferment, lost him on another occasion a bequest of £70,000, which might probably have been easily won by a little wordly craft. It may have happened to him, as to the modest Rector of Bemerton, that "sober men censured him as a man that did not manage his brave parts to the best advantage and preferment, but lost himself in an humble way." Dr. Sandford's removal to Edinburgh with a view to only a temporary residence terminated in a connection with the Scottish Episcopal Church, and at length in his elevation to a vacant see and consecration as Bishop of Edinburgh in 1806.

The historical interest of Bishop Sandford's life is derived from the part he bore in bringing about the union of English Episcopalians in Scotland with the Scottish Episcopal Church. His residence in Edinburg commenced just at the time when the penalties on the Non-Jurors had been repealed—when the light was restored to that outcast community, outcast and persecuted

for conscience sake. The reproach of disaffection no longer existed-Episcopalian and Jacobite had ceased to be convertible terms-and the loyalty, which had clung so closely, sometimes with heroism, sometimes with stubborness, to an exiled dynasty, could now scarce find a better home than the grave of the last male heir of the race of Stuart.* But the omission of the Scottish Church to adopt the standard of the Church of England still presented an obstacle to union. To its removal by the adoption and signing of the Thirty-nine articles no one contributed more than Dr. Sandford. It is not however our present purpose to dwell on the history of Episcopacy in Scotland, fraught as it is with interest, further than to remark the instructive contrast between the peaceful consecration and placid career of Bishop Sandford, and the fierce prelacy of Archbishop Sharp, terminating in blood in the tragedy of Magus moor, where neither the mute pleadings of the gray hairs on a mitred and defenceless brow, nor a daughter's piteous entreaties, could stay the vengeance of an exasperated fanaticism. In one age is seen a father of the church consorting with Lauderdale in the council and Dalziel in the field-armed with the terrors of the gibbet, and the iron boot, and other implements of torture; and hunting the outcast worshippers of God with a soldiery ruthless in mingling blood with those lonely sacrifices; in another age, but in the same land, we may turn to contemplate the consecrated minister of the same Church, standing apart from the force of Stateunendowed-but mightier, because the white vestments of his holy office are not stained with the blood of martyrs. "I have lived," said an eminent witnesst of the ecclesiastical disorders in England in the middle of the seventeenth century,-"I have lived to see religion painted upon banners and thrust out of churches, and the temple turned into a tabernacle, and that tabernacle made ambulatory and covered with the skins of

An instance of lingering Jacobitism, occurring within Dr. Sandford's observation, shows the force of the feeling after the lapse of so many reigns: "Female fidelity is proverbial, and though the young Chevalier could no longer steal the hearts of the Scottish dames, his beauty and perils had formerly interested them in his cause, and kindled a flame not easily to be extinguished. Soon after Dr. Sandford had commenced officiating in Edinburg, his attention was attracted by the movement of an old lady in his congregation, who was in the habit of starting from her knees during the most solemn parts of divine service. Not suspecting that political scruples were the cause of her conduct, he was on the point of remonstrating, when he was informed, that if he was offended at her indecorum, she was not less so at his conformity; and that in her estimation, prayer for the house of Hanover as the royal family of England, was little short of sacrilege." Vol. I. p. 45.

Jeremy Taylor.